(Although Wider Circles will often reflect my business interests as President of Interpreters' Group, LLC, I will also write about general social concerns in what I hope will be an entertaining way. The story of David and Metropop City is meant to evoke a response from readers - pro or con - because it is a subject about which I have strong feelings.)
METROPOP CITY
After automobiles were banned, entire communities had to be re-designed for the way people could live together. It was decided that one of the most practical, economical and environmentally friendly lifestyles would be to build living communities upwards, which would eliminate the waste, pollution and corruption of the old automobile culture.
David lived in such a place, Metropop City, where all the residents lived in buildings with elevators. This was where he was born, and it was always home to him. It was exciting when he first left the apartment and was taken to other parts of the building.
"You just push a button, and it takes you where you want to go."
David didn't remember how old he was when his mother first said those words to him, but he never forgot them. He probably wasn't old enough to reach the elevator buttons himself.
David loved riding in the elevator of his building ever since he was a little boy. He lived with his mother and father in an apartment on the twelfth floor. His mother or father would press the "twelve" button and, quick as a blink, he would be at his front door.
In Metropop City, where people lived vertically in tall buildings instead of spread out in flat communities, the planners worked hard so that people could have the best quality of life. Every building contained the same kinds of things that other communities had - restaurants, schools, movie houses, libraries - but they were all stacked up on floors of the building, and people reached them by an elevator. There were even floors that were "open air parks", with no windows on the sides, where kids could play ball or swim in the lake.
David's building was one of the older ones in Metropop City. There was a public elevator for the residents, and it took people directly to their floors. Sometimes public elevators had operators who let the people in and out. They stopped on every floor, and you didn't have to press a button. But in either case, everyone mixed together and stood next to each other the whole time. Anyone who came into the building could use it.
But there were some private elevators in David's building too. Having a private elevator meant you purchased your own elevator and operated it yourself. Anyone could buy an elevator and use it only for his family. Some people liked doing that because they didn't like having to share an elevator with other people, and they could get to their floors faster.
As he grew older, David saw many of his friends move out to buildings where you needed to buy your own elevator to get to your floor. These buildings became popular, and the older ones like David's began to decay. But David still liked living in his building, and liked to ride in the public elevator too. He used to get out on unfamiliar floors where he didn't know anyone, and just walk around it. Some floors had coffee shops and bookstores. He could go inside and just look at people enjoying themselves. He made some good friends that way. But most of his friends said that David should get his license to operate his own elevator because one day he'll need one for his family. David thought about it seriously.
As he grew older, David saw that most boys his age said they really liked operating their own elevators. Sometimes they would ride it up and down for hours and never even leave the elevator car. They loved, really loved, to go up and down as fast as they could. They bought the latest elevator models which could always go faster than the previous year's model. The buildings had rules about how fast you could go, but most people seemed to ignore them. They could be fined by the building's owners for going so fast, but usually weren't. They told David there must be something wrong with anyone who didn't like to operate an elevator as fast as he could go. They couldn't understand why anyone, especially a young man like David, wouldn't pay money just for the thrill of operating his own private elevator at top speed. They said that girls became so sexually excited by riding in fast elevators with boys that they became uncontrollably amorous, and forced the boys to have sex right then and there!
David didn't know what to say. He had heard some of these wild tales, but explained that he still couldn't understand what was so exciting about pushing a button to move a machine.
Try as he might, David couldn't look at the whole elevator experience the way many other people did. He had always thought of an elevator as a way to get to someplace else, not as something that was supposed to be "fun". He had lots of other ways to have fun. He liked that the public elevator was generally safe and not expensive and that the building's owners usually fixed it when it broke down, which wasn't often. Sure, it wasn't perfect. But he didn't mind climbing the stairs on those rare occasions when he couldn't use it. Sometimes he used the stairs anyway, just because...well, because it felt good to make a different choice sometimes.
The newer buildings only had private elevators and didn't have any staircases at all, so there was no way to leave or enter your apartment except by your personal elevator. In fact, many of these buildings didn't have walking space anywhere, so you couldn't even go to your next door neighbor except from your elevator. These buildings were very different from David's. The apartments were generally much larger, sometimes with just two units per floor. While they didn't cost any more than David's apartment, and were usually a lot larger, the cost of buying and maintaining a private elevator was almost as much as the apartment itself. Also, there were so many elevators in the building that the power to run them cost more than in David's building. And so there were more power blackouts. The elevators also broke down more from constant use. Although the public elevators also broke down, they were bigger and lasted longer, and they cost each resident less to replace because the cost was shared by all of them.
But the people in the newer buildings said it was worth the extra expense. They complained that the public walkway spaces allowed people who didn't even live in the building to get in. David knew this was true, because sometimes he found homeless men, even families with children, lying about in the hallways when he came out of his apartment. Some of these people were beggars, even criminals. But the newer buildings were constructed so that nobody without a private elevator had any space to walk at all. The residents said they didn't mind this because their children were protected from the non-resident men and the sometimes violent children who lurked about in the hallways and the lobby of David's building. And David had to admit this was at least partly true. Many of those poor families and single adults lived in David's building, but on the cheaper lower floors. Those families couldn't afford private elevators. They used the public elevators and stairways to go to floors where good working families, like David's, had an apartment. And, sadly, David also had to admit that sometimes they committed crimes.
The people in the newer buildings said they couldn't raise a family safely in buildings with public elevators. They said that using private elevators exclusively was the only safe choice for raising your family.
ELEVATOR DRIVING RULES
But it was tricky to operate the private elevators. You had to be trained and licensed to do it. David took the test and got his own license. He felt it was good to be prepared, even though he didn't need it in his own building, because he just might need to do it someday. You see he had nothing against having private elevators. He just felt it odd that so many people lived in buildings where you had no other choice.
For instance, most of the newer buildings had enormous retail stores in the lobby. Sometimes the first three floors of the building were nothing but stores that were rented to retail outlets, usually the largest chains. In the mornings, when the stores opened, the building roared with the collective hum of most of the private elevators coming down. Most of the people in the building did all of their shopping in these stores. But most of the people who worked in the stores also lived in the building. These were usually the teenage or young adult children of the residents. The stores depended on the available pool of cheap young workers, even though some of them were college graduates who decided it was better to come back to live with Mom and Dad. For a while, anyway. As often as not, however, their parents decided it was better to send them away to graduate school - even if they had to mortgage the apartment to pay for it! - because anything was better than having their unmarried kids living at home, with their crazy boyfriends or girlfriends constantly running in and out, and the building security having to drop them off at two A.M. because they smashed up their elevators again!
The public debate about elevators was always intense, but, just about the time David graduated from college, it really seemed to increase. People began to notice that the rides in the private elevators were taking a lot longer, and they weren't happy about it. More people wanted to move into the newer buildings, and the owners became even wealthier. They were able to get variances so that they could build more floors on top of the building, which led to even more elevators and a longer riding time.
It became more dangerous too. This was because of the way private elevator traffic was managed. The more private elevators in a building, the more shaftways were needed. Building owners kept constructing new shaftways, but the number of new elevators always outpaced the number of shafts. Sharing shaftspace meant more delays while you waited, hovering, for other elevators to pass. Then you waited while they stopped and unloaded. They kept putting more and more signals and signs in the shafts, but people often ignored them, just as they did the speed limits. And when there were no signs, elevator drivers were expected to make "experienced" guesses about when they had to stop or go, which often resulted in collisions, sometimes fatal ones, so that there were long delays while emergency rescue crews took injured riders to the hospital, and even longer ones when the service elevators removed the damaged cars that were blocking the shaftway traffic.
SHAFTING
Drivers' impatience with the delays led to one of the most dangerous elevator driving practices, known as "shafting". This was when drivers crossed into other shafts at high speeds, even if another car in the shaft was also in operation. The drivers were supposed to "signal" with a special light on the car, but there were many collisions. The drivers would then exit their cars on the floor nearest the collision, and would stand there arguing, sometimes coming to blows, over who caused the accident and what to tell their insurance companies, since their premium rates were sure to go up. Sometimes building security needed to be called to break up these altercations.
BILL'S PROPOSAL
One day David was invited to a party by his friend Seth. Seth lived in one of the newer buildings, and he brought David up to the party in his private elevator. David had once been in the building a few years before to see Bill, a friend from college, but had since lost touch with him. He remembered that his last letter to Bill came back "addressee unknown". Still, he hoped that Bill was invited to the party so that he could see him again.
On his way up in Seth's private elevator, David remembered the last time he saw Bill. Bill was a little older than David, and his wife had just had their first child. David remembered Bill as having what Bill called "progressive" ideas, although some people just thought them "odd". He believed that it was time a public elevator should be installed in the building. Even though he was raising a small child, he thought that the fears of outsiders were exaggerated, and not worth the unnecessary cost and extra work of using private elevators for even the shortest trips within the building. He thought that staircases should be made to go to the other floors, and walkways for moving around your own floor. He told David that the Building Council was meeting the next day, and he would publicly announce his proposal then. He knew that many in the building would resist change at all cost, but he believed that the time was ripe, and that some of his neighbors would agree. David remembered how excited Bill was about his proposal. He was curious about what happened at that meeting, and whether it had something to do with his losing contact with Bill.
David was disappointed because he didn't see Bill anywhere at the party. It was a very spacious and expensive apartment on the top floor, with a glorious view of Metropop City. There were many guests milling about. They looked prosperous and confident, even though most of them were not much older than David. To be frank, David felt a little intimidated. Bill was different, though, because he was always forthright about promoting his ideas. If anyone could get people to change things, he could.
Finally, he mentioned Bill's name to Seth. Seth said the name wasn't familiar, but he'd only bought his apartment two years ago. He told David that some of the other guests might remember him.
But something strange seemed to happen every time he asked one of the other guests about Bill. Unlike Seth, the mention of Bill's name seemed to make them uncomfortable. They all denied knowing him, but also seemed to want to discreetly move away from David, usually by suddenly spotting a lost friend who most conveniently appeared at that moment.
Suddenly, one of the guests who had been watching David walked over, gently took hold of his arm and pulled him to a quiet corner. He said his name was Dwight, and that he remembered the meeting where Bill made his proposal to the Building Council. Dwight said that he didn't know Bill very well, even though they had moved into the building at about the same time. But he remembered listening intently to the proposal, and thought it was worth taking seriously.
But a number of the other residents had a very different reaction.
Dwight said that the more prosperous residents were quickest to criticize the idea. The owner of the largest bank, for instance, said that taxes and operating expenses were already so high that the new construction would add enormous costs to living in the building. The local realtor said that public elevators would slow building traffic even more, and studies showed that public elevators led to increased crime, which would lower property values. But the loudest complaints came from residents who were involved with the private elevator business in the building. There were three top elevator manufacturers in Metropop City, and they all had dealerships in the building. The heads of the dealerships all lived in the building. They brought up the lack of comfort, the dirty public cars, the crowds and the excess travel time. But Bill said that many public elevators were now faster than private ones because they had their own shaftways, which meant there was none of the traffic congestion that plagued the private users.
Dwight vividly remembered that the members of the Building Council often laughed when they discussed Bill's proposal. They seemed to want to talk about Bill's "strange" habits, his family background or his appearance rather than discuss the proposal itself. He said they did this carefully, never saying outright that people shouldn't trust Bill, but their tone was unmistakable: he is simply not like one of us!
Dwight said that the Council Chairman, who owned the largest department store in the building, and in many other buildings as well, suddenly declared the meeting over because he had a personal emergency. But the Chairman then went off to what looked like his own "private" meeting with several of the Council members and some residents who were part of his "inner circle". These included: an executive from the power company, which raked in millions every month from the use of private elevators by every resident of the building; a video star whose wildly popular character, "Jumpin' Jack", was a super-hero crimefighter who roamed the shaftways in his souped-up elevator car that could burst through the roof and into other buildings; the President of "Parents Concerned", a group whose members maintained that public elevators threatened to lower school standards by admitting too many "culturally deprived" children from the lower floors; the director of programming for a major network, which made most of its advertising revenue from the elevator companies; no less than three mortgage company owners, and several other people that Dwight didn't even recognize as building residents. Dwight also mentioned - although he hadn't see him personally - that the Deputy Mayor of Metropop City was rumored to be in the room.
Nobody could say for certain what happened after the meeting. Dwight only knew that only a week later Bill's company transferred him to another city. But Dwight remembered the address, and David wrote a letter to Bill saying that he missed him and that he wanted to know how he liked his new life outside Metropop City.
Bill wrote David a nice letter, saying how glad he was to hear from him again. He said that the day after the meeting his boss called him into his office because he had received "complaints" about his work. Bill said that his boss would not tell him who made the complaints, but that they went back "several months". Although he wanted to fire Bill, he decided instead to transfer him out of Metropop City.
Now Bill lives next door to his own Supervisor, who has become his best friend. They both belong to the Building Council and go to meetings together where nobody has ever brought up the dangerous idea of public elevators.
